The University of South Carolina Electrical and Computer Engineering Department's Writing Center hosted a summer workshop June 23-25,1997. The thirty-two participants included representatives of four Gateway institutions, three SUCCEED Coalition colleges, and a number of other colleges and institutions involved in engineering or professional communications. The participating Gateway schools were NJIT, The Ohio State University, Polytechnic Institute, and USC.

The workshop had two principal objectives. The first purpose was to provide a forum for sharing resources and ideas for improving the teaching of professional communications within engineering colleges. The second objective was to publish the Workshop Proceedings to disseminate papers and materials that distill the ideas and instructional plans presented and generated at the meeting. The recently published Proceedings reflect the future directions of writing and communications programs in engineering, as well as the process of collaborative inquiry that guided Workshop sessions.

At the opening session, participants shared their individual goals and their expectations for the workshop. Participants attended plenary sessions on collaboration, student success, writing center research and development, training and assessment, and freshman programs. Plenary session papers, presented by engineering faculty and writing specialists, described a number of approaches to collaboration and the integration of communications skills into the engineering curriculum. In the breakout sessions, participants spent time working together outlining and exploring topics they had chosen. In these working sessions, group members developed plans and materials that would benefit their own institutions and others.

The participants addressed one of the nation's major concerns: educating professionals in science and engineering to communicate information with clarity, style, and integrity. The Writing Center staff compiled the workshop materials into a Proceedings which is available from:

Back to Gateway Homepage

Back to Table of Contents